Michelle and I continue to toss around ideas on names for the baby. Last night, out of nowhere, she asked me, "What do you think of the name 'Emerson'"? Without hesitation, I said, "Well, along with Lake and Palmer, it makes a pretty good band."...LOL. Michelle seems to like Emerson, Noah, Elijah, and Ethan, Michael and Cage. I know this because she "accidentally" left a last where I would see it...LOL.

I may have invented a new category of moral theory. My ethics professor likes to assign us what she calls "blitz" writings, where we are given a topic and we have 5 minutes to write a paragraph or two about the subject. Earlier this week, we were talking about euthanasia (assisted suicide), and we were assigned one such writing. In ethics, we use terms such as "obligatory", "permissible", "forbidden", and "morally worse" to describe moral acts. In my blitz writing, I got myself in a vocabulary bind, and could not find the right word. And since I only had a few minutes, I could not start over. So, I said that passive euthanasia may be morally "not as bad" as active euthanasia. Passive euthanasia can be thought of as letting someone expire without taking extreme measures to save the person's life (an example would be a "do not resuscitate" order), while active euthanasia is the act of causing someone to expire sooner than he/she would otherwise. Had I started from the other direction, I could have said that active euthanasia may be "morally worse" than the passive kind. Anyway, my professor got a big kick out of it, making a big note of it on my paper, and kidding my in front of the class. It was all quite funny.

Yesterday, I bought tickets to see Eric Clapton October 18 in Birmingham. My brother Tim and I are super-excited about the show. Michelle and I are planning on seeing Bruce Hornsby here in Memphis August 16. We are really excited to see Bruce as well.

I hope everyone is doing well. Peace...